The intent of this group is to encourage and develop relationships between small business owners and suitable investors. Monthly meetings will be focused on short presentations that provide timely and applicable lessons for starting, developing, and funding new business concepts. This group is solutions-oriented, and it embraces a no-nonsense approach towards immediate and actionable relationships, partnerships, and conceptual fruition.

This is a group for anyone who is a Technology Professional and interested in learning how to stay relevant and wants to learn more about hiring and career trends for technologists in the Chicagoland area. We will profile tech companies/startups, the most marketable tech skills, tech interview techniques and more.

Founder Sensei is a voluntary mentorship program for founders who want to improve themselves and the businesses they create. Mentors act as facilitators with small groups of founding teams to help them through their journey to startup success. By combining the Art of Customer Development, Business Model Design and Agile Engineering together with fellowship and mentor support, entrepreneurs can discover what is missing in their startups and how they can take their businesses to the next level.

Startups don't fail because they can't get the product built, they fail because they can't acquire customers. This group is for startups and professionals who are actively acquiring customers. We meet to discuss strategies and tactics for taking your startup up and to the right.

Venture Connects provides entrepreneurs, both seasoned and starting out, with opportunities to investment capital, strategic business partnerships and other essential business services needed to cultivate growth. Venture Connects does this through an online platform and in-person partnerships. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, investor, or business looking to help startups, Venture Connects bridges the gap and is the one stop source to assist your business. www.ventureconnects.biz

This is a group for startups, freelancers, developers, entrepreneurs, remote worker, work-from-home professionals (and everyone in between) living on the north side of Chicago, who want to work and network in a coworking environment that will stimulate, inspire and support. If you don't want to schlep downtown to a coworking space and are looking for a community of like-mined, supportive folks in the Wicker Park, Bucktown, Ukranian Village, Lakeview, Logan Square (and elsewhere!), then please jo …

The Chicago Lean Startup Circle is a group of smart and driven high-tech entrepreneurs that have learned how to discover customers and build products they want. Lean Startups (which can include for profit and not for profit organizations, new product/innovation organizations within larger companies and even government agencies) achieve success faster than most because they get out of the building to talk to customers, validate business model assumptions as quickly and cheaply as possible, use ag …

Entrepreneurship permeates the culture of the Digital Age. The advent of the Digital Age has democratized innovation and entrepreneurship. Never before has it been more possible for anyone from anywhere,  with  a great idea and a burning desire to succeed,  to make it big, and,  in the process, change the world in a relatively short period of time. HP, Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Yahoo,  eBay, Amazon, Google, Facebook and many, many, many other iconic companies all started with just …

Tech In Motion is an event that originated during Chicago's 1st annual Tech Week. The event went so well we decided to continue to do more. The basic idea of the group is to explore how to create a company from an idea and what it takes to become a successful business. We will explore this process by focusing on three critical areas and inviting a panel of experts talk about each phase: Idea, Build and Go. We will be speaking about the full life cycle of an idea from inception to profitability. …

We are a group of first or second generation Business Owners, Executives and Entrepreneurs that meet to discuss topics relating to starting up a business, scaling, selling, and planning for our exit from our business. We meet once a month. Each meeting has a presenter on a topic that Entrepreneurs want to learn more about. Some of our Past Topics include: Selection of a Business Entity, Acquiring Venture Capital, What to know about your Employment Agreements? Top Ten thing to know in being Acqui …

Chicago Food Tech offers a variety of meetup events to bring together restauranteurs, food and technology changemakers and innovators with diverse backgrounds in order to create dialogues surrounding new business models, showcase opportunities, challenges, synergies, and forecast food technology's future.

digitalundivided GROW Chicago is a monthly meet up of digital companies founded/co-founded by black women working together to GROW their tech-based companies from Idea to MVP to Growth and then Exit. Sponsored by digitalundivided, a company that builds forward thinking initiatives that change the digital space.

A curated set of events that we encourage everyone to attend!

Are you interested in improving your product toolbox? This group will explore what Steve Jobs referred to as the "tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product." Each session will focus on a particular tool or method, and apply it hands-on to a real project. There are no experts here, just makers who want to dig in and learn from each other. Welcome software product managers, experience designers, marketers, entrepreneurs, and lone rangers -- let's have fun pract …

A key ingredient to a vibrant, healthy community that creates and sustains career opportunities is an environment that promotes innovation. Come join your Chicago area colleagues in a collaborative effort to maximize technology capabilities to boosting innovation and provide sustained career opportunities in the Chicago area.  Date: Wednesday, March 20th at 5:30 p.m. Where: IC Stars 415 N. Dearborn St. , Chicago IL

Coffee with entrepreneurs, makers, developers, and creatives in the Chicago area. Meet other entrepreneurs and creatives, hear announcements on upcoming startup and creative events, and talk about startup and tech news. What better way could there be to start your day? Have a question? Get it answered at this meetup. Like to network? No problem here. Get caffeinated, start your day, and meet some interesting, creative, and smart people in the city.

Chicago Health 2.0 | Tech is a community organized to improve healthcare through technology. We design meetup content that profiles startups and individuals - mixed with networking. Our meetup membership includes entrepreneurs, startup employees, clinicians, pharmacists, social workers and industry executives. Recent events have focused on opportunities where technology can solve problems - personal health records (PHRs), information therapy (Ix), patient/caregiver communities, patient/doctor co …

We are the technical folks at 1871. We're here to share ideas, code, questions, disaster porn and strong drinks. All 1871 members who touch code or infrastructure are welcome to join. Our startups live and die by our ability to build solutions quickly across a large surface area of problems. When you find yourself outside familiar territory, you want a trusted group of colleagues to turn to. When things blow up, you want someone to tell you how they blew up worse and survived. Let's build that.

BuiltInChicago.org is an awesome community of entrepreneurs, engineers, marketers, developers, designers, investors, technologists and academics working hard to create the next big web or mobile business. Our mission is to connect, educate and promote the growing digital community in Chicago. And we want you to JOIN today. This group will be used to help connect members of the community in person. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions: adam@builtinchicago.org

If you believe in a fulfilling career outside of traditional paths, then you are ripe for "Uncubing"! Join the movement. If you are a talented dev, designer or hustler looking to access a whole slew of great opportunities in one single place, then you'll fit right on in! Be the first to learn about upcoming events, early bird discounts, exclusive workshops, and advice for getting face-time with some of the leading startups in across the US. About Us: Wakefield is a media company that publishes …

For anyone who is working for themselves or wish they could. Our goal is to build a support network of experienced freelancers, entrepreneurs, and independent thinkers to help each other and anyone who wishes they could make the leap out of their unfulfilling, soulless jobs. We have great ideas on how to grow this group, but to kick things off we are starting a speaker series of experts to speak on topics like: Account & Legal for Entrepreneurs, Health Insurance, Communication, Financial Plannin …

Imagine if there was a place, where at one table an entrepreneur meets her next $100,000 investor. A designer meets a new client, a web developer with a great internet startup. A Ruby engineer meets a charismatic founder that excites him with her vision, so much so that he can picture leaving his day job for the exhilarating experience of working tirelessly for technology stock options that could be worth millions one day... We're building this community. --- Part of the Tech Happy Hour Allia …

Educelerate is a national education industry network with an initial focus on Chicago and the Midwest and new offshoots in Los Angeles and Phoenix. We are starting our efforts through this monthly MeetUp to grow and develop an ecosystem of entrepreneurs, investors and partners. Please visit our website at www.educelerate.com

The worlds of hackers and journalists are coming together as reporting goes digital and Internet companies become media empires. Journalists call themselves "hacks," someone who can churn out words in any situation. Hackers use the digital equivalent of duct tape to whip out code. Hacker-journalists try and bridge the two worlds. This group is to bring all these people together -- those who are working to help people make sense of their world. It's for hackers exploring technologies to filter an …

This group is for Chicago Area developers and designers of all makes and models to get together and drink alcohol (or some other poison), showcase their work, share tips and techniques, and find full time and contract work opportunities. We invite group members to submit ideas to talk about.  Bring a laptop or a tablet, a sketchpad or an etch-a-sketch.  We don't care. We are technology agnostic and just want to have drinks and meet other folk who know our woes.

Obama for Technology | Technology for Obama was created on My.BarackObama.com in February 2007 shortly after Barack Obama announced his intentions to run for President of the United States of America (POTUS). We are the "original" Technology for Obama group (just Google "Technology for Obama" or "Obama For Technology" and watch the videos, etc). Because I organize several Meetups, I've decided create this "Technology For Obama" Meetup Group to help get President Barack Obama reelected in 2012. M …

Enterprise technology is changing the face of large organizations by bringing efficiency, increased profitably, and employee happiness. The Chicago #EntTech Meetup works to foster innovation in enterprise tech, build a community of learning, and promote the best and brightest within the space. Organized by Manifest Digital and Acceleprise